Earlier this week, the Oakland City Council voted to approve the second phase of a $10.9 million surveillance center that would enable the City to engage in widespread warrantless surveillance of Oakland residents who have engaged in no wrongdoing whatsoever. This is a terrible blow to privacy.

A Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling this week will make it easier for police to track your movements through your cell phone after the court decided police aren't required to obtain a search warrant to track you.

We've all heard a lot in the last month about the government's flimsy excuse for the NSA's massive collection of telephone and Internet metadata: that this sensitive information is somehow just "business records" that don't require a warrant for government access. That same argument has been used by the government to also justify the warrantless collection of cell site data -- the mobile company's record of which tower your phone connects to -- despite the fact that these records can reveal enormous amounts of information about where you go and with whom.

Thankfully, we're seeing some significant strides to put this dangerous idea to rest.

When it comes to making progress around privacy, it's sometimes best to look at what individual states are doing. Unfortunately, faster legislative changes on the state level can be a double-edged sword. Massachusetts is the latest example: while they are considering a bill implementing strong warrant requirements around electronic communications, they are also looking to unnecessarily expand wiretap laws.

In a landmark decision in Commonwealth v. Rousseau, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled this week that people "may reasonably expect not to be subjected to extended GPS electronic surveillance by the government" without a search warrant -- whether they are driving the vehicle in question or not.